ReTales

Youthful footsteps echoed throughout the store's frozen section. It is not often a challenge to determine one's age from footsteps. The slow, stumbling walk of an old man, and the tap of his walker or cane, gives him away immediately. A hop and a skip might reveal that one is a child. But in the ages between 12 and 60, there is a singular type of step, one which is not easily linked to age due to the variance in height and weight of the teenage and adult population. In the cold of the frozen section, this uniformity was slimmed even further, because nothing leeches strength from the heart and legs like cold. But in the footsteps of the confident young girl who wore a Sun Valley uniform, one could sense her youthfulness. The cold didn't touch her and she wasn't afraid of it or hateful of it. And so perhaps it was the youthfulness of her step that revealed to the mysterious figure known as the Blue Phantom who it was who came to visit him, in his hidden lair behin...

Krissy had been at the job about two months when she first heard talk of the Phantom. She laughed a little when she told Eleanor (a girl about six years older than her) about the fragment of the conversation she'd overheard. “'Phantom's gotten in the traps again,' was what the Big Boss said,” she told the older girl. Eleanor returned her mild laugh. “Yeah, I've heard talk before about the Phantom. Goldie says if you ever want to hear what it's about you could talk to one of the managers.” “Have you asked them about it?” the green-haired girl said. “No. I, uh, don't like talking to management.” “Oh.” There was a pause. “Y'know,” Eleanor said then, “if there was a Phantom here—sorry, I'm assuming from what we've heard it's like a Phantom of the Opera thing—” “Yeah, I was thinking like Phantom of the Grocery Store ,” Krissy interrupted, immediately embarrassed by the crappiness of her joke. “—and so I ...